Aadhaar – The world’s largest mass surveillance project.

The Unique Identification (UID) Project, Aadhaar, is a twelve digit number linked to a citizen’s demographic and biometric information which can be used to identify them anywhere within the country. It was initially marketed as an effort to provide the poor with an identity and to de-duplicate the population by providing one unique number to every individual. However, it has now transformed into a means of coercion and silencing the population.

“Voluntary” Enrollment

In 2016, there was a strategy overview document that said, “Enrolment is the process by which residents voluntarily assert their identity and apply for Aadhaar.” However, Aadhaar has now become a precondition for the socio-economically backward sections to receive state support. A UID number has become essential for payment of taxes without which the authorities can cancel our PAN card and then levy a penalty for not having one, thus ensuring absolute compliance. A surveillance project like Aadhaar plays on the fear of individuals who do not want to be denied services or be criminalized because of being absent from the database.

Usha Ramanathan talks about the “function creep” in her analysis of Aadhaar. Aadhaar has become the de-facto identity document accepted at hospitals, schools, banks and private institutions. The function creep maintains that bonded labor and women rescued from prostitution will not get rehabilitated unless their number is in the system, admission to schools and mid-day meals will be denied without a UID number, survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy or persons with disabilities will not be given assistance if they haven’t enrolled for Aadhaar. This arises out of complete denial of the dignity of individuals that every citizen should be entitled to in order to ensure freedom of expression and dissent.

Why does privacy matter?

The initial draft of the Aadhaar Act called the National Identity Authority of India (NIDAI) Bill protected the confidentiality of information collected at the time of enrollment. However, the new version does not have any such provision. Paradoxically, it has established a system of selling/sharing that information (except for the core biometrics) with any wishing entity. The privacy of the data being provided to the government is concerning. Complete security of the data stored in the Central Identities Data Repository needs to be ensured and any breach in the system would lead to exposing sensitive information about citizens leading to possible identity theft.

What sets Aadhaar apart from other schemes is that it stores biometric and demographic data in a centralized database and this UID is sought to be ‘seeded’ with every other database (public or private) in our country. While information is stored in different archiving systems – travel, mobile phone, employment and it is very difficult for anyone to create an entire profile out of these disjointed archives. However, Aadhaar aims to integrate these categories of information thus giving the government complete control to reconstruct the profile of an individual and thus allowing for complete surveillance not only through physical tracking (GPS), but also wider surveillance by keeping an eye on every activity (travel, shopping, communication) of the person but completely repressing dissent.

While we are already being surveyed by our smartphones and websites like Facebook and Google, none of them are as all-encompassing as a policy like Aadhaar. To argue that since we’re already under watch, we shouldn’t object to Aadhaar is almost saying that since we have been robbed before, we shouldn’t invest in locks for our houses anymore.

The argument that only people who have something to hide would be afraid of a scheme like Aadhaar assumes any individual asking for privacy to be corrupt. Glenn Greenwald’s TED talk beautifully tackles the idea of why every citizen should be concerned about his or her privacy even if we have nothing to hide.

Stifling Dissent

Foucault provides us with his definition of the Panopticon, an all-seeing, omnipresent individual or institution watching over a person or society. Its power lies in its potential to instil fear of what it could do. It controls action through what Foucault calls ‘disciplinary power’, a form of power that is constant, unnoticeable and internalized. The Indian government’s vision to watch and control the actions of all its citizens has been illustrated by its obsession with Aadhaar.

Attorney General Mukul Rohathgi’s statement that “citizens do not have absolute right over their bodies” and his claim that the state is similar to a corporation where its citizens are its members and the power of the state can be enforced to enforce an “orderly, peaceful and tranquil life”. In one of his most looming statements, he announced that “Even if you want to be forgotten, the state is not willing to forget you” (Indorewala, 2017).

We all have broken laws knowingly or unknowingly at some point. Broken a signal or got your ears cleaned or teeth fixed by roadside vendors (yes, Chapter V, Section 49 of the Dentist Act of 1948). However, in order to be punished, one needs to be identified first and the harm caused by breaking these laws does not justify the effort that goes into punishing the offender. In a Surveillance state however, this effort required is nullified. A state that has been watching over you and your actions will always have enough evidence to punish. Thus, if every citizen has broken some law and is liable to punishment and the State of aware of this, whom does it decide to punish? Such a State would target any dissenter for the sake of its continuity.

Change only takes place in a society that is accommodative of change. One needs to be able to live outside the law and conceptualize an alternative living for transformation to occur. No government has the right to access information on each and every citizen and choose to criminalize those to who pose a threat. A society consisting of perfect law abiding conformist citizens is one that will remain stagnant and incapable of innovation and imagination.

                                                                                                                                                                      Written by - 

Vaishnavi Behl

References

Datta, S. (2017, March 24). The end of privacy: Aadhaar is being converted into the world's biggest surveillance engine. Retrieved from https://scroll.in/article/832592/the-end-of-privacy-aadhaar-is-being-converted-into-the-worlds-biggest-surveillance-engine

Discipline and Punish, Panopticism. (2017, March 25). Retrieved from https://foucault.info/doc/documents/disciplineandpunish/foucault-disciplineandpunish-panopticism-html

Drèze, J. (2016, March 14). The Aadhaar coup. Retrieved from http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/jean-dreze-on-aadhaar-mass-surveillance-data-collection/article8352912.ece

Indorewala, H. (2017, May 19). Aadhaar and an Omnipresent State That Will Never Forget You. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/136521/aadhaar-omnipresent-state/

Mather, B. B. (2014). Power, Panopticism and surveillance: A Panoptic perspective on Aadhar. Zenith International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 4(7).

Ramanathan, U. (2017, April 27). The Function Creep That Is Aadhaar. Retrieved from https://thewire.in/128039/aadhaar-function-creep-uid/